Last updated by mjekiel on 2019-08-15. Originally submitted by mjekiel on 2019-06-02.
List of MA Seminars 2019-2021 sorted by teachers' surnames
1. MA Seminars for the English philology programme :: Seminaria dla kierunku Filologia angielska
prof. zw. dr hab. Arleta Adamska - Sałaciak
dr hab. Anna Ewert, prof. UAM
dr hab. Jacek Fabiszak, prof. UAM
dr hab. Piotr Gąsiorowski, prof. UAM
dr Rafał Jończyk
dr hab. Wiesław Kuhn, prof. UAM
dr Iwona Mazur
dr hab. Joanna Pawelczyk, prof. UAM
dr hab. Hanna Rutkowska, prof. UAM
dr hab. Agnieszka Rzepa, prof. UAM
prof. zw. dr hab. Liliana Sikorska
dr hab. Bogusława Whyatt, prof. UAM
prof. zw. dr hab. Jacek Witkoś
Our focus in this seminar will be word meaning as analysed by linguists and as represented in dictionaries. In other words, we will be looking at the lexicon from the point of view of lexicology (linguistic study of words), lexical semantics (study of word meanings), and lexicography (scientific study of dictionaries).
Possible MA projects include – but are not limited to – investigating various aspects of the English lexicon, such as the semantics of individual words and phrases (e.g. collocations, idioms); relations between meaning and form (synonymy, polysemy etc); the rise of new words and meanings (and disappearance of old ones); figurative language in its manifold manifestations. Another possible research area is the contrastive study of a chosen aspect of the lexicons of English and Polish (or the student's native language if other than Polish). All MA theses will incorporate a lexicographic component, examining the treatment of the lexical phenomena studied in different dictionaries or/and dictionary types. The use of electronic language corpora will likely be needed as well to support the author’s arguments with authentic data.
Candidates are expected to have some background knowledge in general linguistics. Previous exposure to semantics or (meta)lexicograpy would be a bonus, but is not obligatory. Interest in words and dictionaries is taken for granted.
Bilingualism and multilingualism are ubiquitous in today’s world. As our joint class research project conducted with the 2019 group of MA students shows, there are no monolinguals among Polish university students. Everybody in the current population of students uses English and/or other languages in the digital environment for real-life purposes, i.e. communicating on the social media, looking up information or recreationally. Also, demographic processes, including mobility within the EU and influx of migrants from outside the EU, contribute to the changing landscape of language use in the Polish population, posing various challenges, for example, for the system of education.
Bilingualism has been the focus of research interest for almost a century. The question of the relationship between bilingualism and general cognitive processes has been central since the very beginning. Are bilinguals more (or perhaps less) intelligent than the general population? Are there any general cognitive benefits of knowing and using another language? Is there a health benefit? Do bilinguals see the world the same way monolinguals do? Are bilingual concepts and understanding of the world different? How are the two languages of a bilingual processed in the mind? Are there any costs of knowing more than one language? What happens to the bilingual’s native language? These are only some of the questions asked by bilingualism researchers at various points. In addition, we know of a multitude of factors influencing bilingual development and cognitive outcomes, ranging from L1 proficiency to the amount of daily code-switching.
Just as bilingualism research has always been interdisciplinary, in this seminar we will focus on the different perspectives in the study of bilingual language use and bilingual cognition. This construction of the field allows for a broad range of prospective MA research project topics related to bilingual language acquisition, processing and use, depending on the specific interests of class participants.
Course outline and credit requirements: Our work throughout the course will be divided into stages leading up to the preparation of a research-based thesis. During the first semester a brief overview of the topic will be provided. By the end of this semester the participants will be expected to choose the general topic of their thesis and conduct a basic reference search. A detailed research project with specific research questions and procedures will be expected by the end of the second semester. Throughout the next year the participants will be expected to conduct the research and report on it. Guidance on research methods and individual tuition will be provided throughout the course. Course evaluation will be progress-based and will include both classroom activities and thesis-related work.
Selected bibliography
Cook, Vivian and Benedetta Bassetti (eds). 2011. Language and bilingual cognition. New York: Psychology Press.
Cook, Vivian and Li Wei (eds). 2016. Cambridge handbook of linguistic multi-competence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
de Groot, Annette M.B. 2011. Language and cognition in bilinguals and multilinguals. New York: Psychology Press.
Jarvis, Scott and Aneta Pavlenko. 2008. Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. New York: Routledge.
Kroll, Judith F. and Annette M.B. de Groot (eds). 2005. Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pavlenko, Aneta (ed.). 2009. The bilingual mental lexicon: Interdisciplinary approaches. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Pavlenko, Aneta (ed.). 2011. Thinking and speaking in two languages. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Schwieter, John W. (ed.). 2015. Cambridge handbook of bilingual processing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The aim of the seminar is first to consider the issue of adaptation from one text of culture in English into another/others (e.g. from page to screen/stage/other media, etc.) from a theoretical perspective and then apply tools developed as a result of the theoretical reflection to the texts chosen by students for scrutiny. Adaptation studies although covering different media employed in the process of adaptation (literature to literature, literature to film, film to literature, film/literature to computer games, comic book to film, etc. – see Hutcheon 2006: 9-15) does mainly focus on what occurs when a literary work of art is transferred on screen, when another fully fledged and autonomous work of art is created. The relationship between the source text and the target text, with their medial and artistic autonomy, will be then the subject of studies in the seminar. Naturally, the theoretical considerations will be supplemented with widely commented examples of adaptations of both canonical (and less canonical) texts of culture, especially the ones which – due to their dependence on the inherent traits of the medium and / or its experimental nature – pose a particular challenge for the adaptor.
Pre-requisites: candidates are expected to express interest in both high and popular culture of the English speaking world. Knowledge of the canon of English/American literature is also necessary as most of the theses will be devoted to transfers from page to other media/art forms.
Requirements: preparation of the assigned material and active participation in class discussions; also, in the spring semester students will be required to give presentations in classes on either class readings or films based on literary works.
Selected bibliography:
Banks, Carol. 2010. “Picturing Shakespeare’s plays”, in: Brusberg-Kiermeier, Stefani and JörgHelbig (eds.) Sh@kespeare in the Media. From the Globe Theatre to the World Wide Web. Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang Verlag. 75-88.
Brusberg-Kiermeier, Stefani and JörgHelbig (eds.) 2010. Sh@kespeare in the Media. From the Globe Theatre to the World Wide Web. Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang Verlag.
Cartmell, Deborah and Imelda Whelehan (eds.) 2006 [1999]. Adaptations. From Text to Screen, Screen to Text. London – New York: Routledge.
Cartmell, Deborah. 2010. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The Relationship between Text and Film. London: Methuen.
During, Simon (ed.) 2008 [2007] The Cultural Studies Reader. 3rd edition. London – New York: Routledge.
Fabiszak, Jacek. 2005. Polish Televised Shakespeares. A Study of Shakespeare Productions within the Television Theatre Format. Poznań: Motivex.
Geraghty, Christine. 2008. Now a Major Motion Picture. Film Adaptations of Literature and Drama. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Hall, Stuart. 2008. “Cultural Studies and its theoretical legacies”, in: During, Simon (ed.) 2008 [2007] The Cultural Studies Reader. 3rd edition. London – New York: Routledge. 33-44.
Hatchuel, Sarah. 2004. Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.
Hayward, Susan. 2013. Cinema Studies. The Key Studies. London – New York: Routledge.
Helman, Alicja. 1998. Twórcza zdrada. Poznań: Ars Nova.
Helman, Alicja (ed.) 1998. Słownik pojęć filmowych. Tom 10. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. 7-42.
Henderson, Diana E. 2007. “From popular entertainment to literature”, in: Shaughnessy, Robert (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6-25.
Hendrykowski, Marek. 1999. Język ruchomych obrazów. Poznań: Ars Nova.
Hunter, Jefferson. 2010. English Filming, English Writing. Bloomington – Indianapolis: IndianaUniversity Press.
Hutcheon, Linda. 2006. A Theory of Adaptation. New York – London: Routledge.
McFarlane, Brian. 1996. Novel to Film. An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Orgel, Stephen. 2007. “Shakespeare illustrated”, in: Shaughnessy, Robert (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 67-92.
Pfister, Manfred. 1993. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Tr. by John Halliday. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.
Rothwell, Kenneth. 2004. A History of Shakespeare on Screen. A Century of Film and Television. 2nd edition. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.
Sanders, Julie. 2007 [2008]. Adaptation and Appropriation. London – New York: Routledge.
Shaughnessy, Robert (ed.) 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stam, Robert. 2002. Film theory. An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Szyłak, Jacek. 2000. Komiks i okolice kina. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego.
Worthen, W.B. 2007. “Performing Shakespeare in digital culture”, in: Shaughnessy, Robert (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 227-247.
This seminar will concentrate on processes, both historical and ongoing, which affect the lexicon by enriching it with new words (derived, recombined, borrowed or coined from scratch) and by altering the meanings, connotations, patterns of use or grammatical functions of lexical items. We shall examine the ways in which the lexicon evolves and produces linguistic novelty, and the mechanisms by which lexical innovations are propagated in speech communities. The focus will be on English, especially on the historical episodes of accelerated change (including the present time), but the discussion will also cover other languages as well as typological generalisations drawn from the processes in question.
The topics discussed in class will help the participants to develop their own MA proposals in the area of lexical and semantic change. Candidates should have an interest in the history, properties and functions of words, as well as the origin and spread of linguistic innovations. A general familiarity with the history of English and the use of language corpora is desirable.
Credits will depend on the evaluation of the students’ active participation, which will include required reading and preparing seminar presentations individually or in small teams. In the second semester of the first year tentative MA thesis projects should be submitted and from that time on the progress of those projects will also be evaluated.
Selected bibliography
Joseph, Brian D. & Richard D. Janda (eds.). 2003.
Handbook of historical linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Mair, Christian. 2006.
Twentieth-century English: History, variation and standardization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
OED =
Oxford English Dictionary (updates).
https://public.oed.com/updates/
Stockwell, Robert & Donka Minkova. 2001.
English words: History and structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trask, R. Larry. 2015.
Trask’s historical linguistics (3rd edn., revised and edited by Robert McColl Millar). Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge.
The Role of Emotions in Linguistic Creativity
dr Rafał Jończyk
What does it take to have a creative mind? Does the way you feel influence your creative potential? How about the language(s) you speak?
Understanding human’s creative potential is without a doubt one of the hottest topics in science. This is, of course, for a reason: the human mind is unique in its capacity to form novel and original ideas that improve our wellbeing and push us forward. Being able to ‘crack’ the mechanisms that underlie the generation of a creative idea could give us the possibility to improve creative education and boost our own creative potential. Recent research suggests that a creative thought is generated when the brain brings together disparate information that is already available to us to form new combinations. Critically, the brain does that most effectively in its ‘default’, resting state (this is probably why a lot of great ideas come to mind under the shower!). This provokes important questions about the relationship between creativity, emotion, and language: are we more creative when we’re positive and open to experience or maybe when we’re feeling angry or depressed? Does speaking another language open up a new possibility of combining concepts and experiences from both languages and ‘wrap’ them in a novel, creative idea? Do we feel emotion to the same extent in our first and second language? If not, could this help or hinder our creative performance?
In this seminar we will discuss recent empirical findings in the field of creativity, emotion, and bilingualism, with a particular emphasis on how emotion and language may influence creative performance. During the course, students will be familiarized with the theoretical and methodological approaches to creativity and its interplay with language and emotion. Importantly, students will learn about ways in which language, emotion, and creativity are studied in an experimental setting and will be guided to design and carry out their own empirical study on the interplay between creativity, emotion, and language.
Selected bibliography
Armony, J. and P. Vuilleumier (eds.) 2013. The Cambridge Handbook of Human Affective Neuroscience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kaufman, J. C., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.). (2010). The Cambridge handbook of creativity. Cambridge University Press.
Pavlenko, A. (2005) Emotions and multilingualism. Cambridge University Press.
Vartanian, O., Bristol, A. S., & Kaufman, J. C. (Eds.). (2013). Neuroscience of creativity. MIT Press.
American Literary Migrations and the Transatlantic Imagination
dr hab. Wiesław Kuhn, prof. UAM
This M.A. seminar proposes to look at American literature from a global perspective and not solely as a local phenomenon that arose in response to a “virgin land”. In this it will broadly follow the “global” turn in American literary studies, which has been evident in the last decade and a half. In particular we will be focusing on important American writers who travelled to Europe in the past 150 years and whose work contains a “transatlantic” element: a fusion of more local American influences with European literary experimentation, thematic material and historical contexts. It is hoped that this seminar will show how many of the central writings of American literature are in some sense located outside of America—outside, that is, if one understands America only as a self-contained national space and one that generates an Adamic or nativist consciousness. This concept of a “trans-national” American literary imagination could be said to apply, for example, to the international narratives of Henry James and Edith Wharton; to modernist and Lost Generation reactions to Paris as the capital of the avant-garde or of sophisticated worldliness; to T.S. Eliot’s extraordinarily influential depiction of post-World War I Europe as a haunting montage of neo-Symbolist images; and even to southern writers who saw the themes and figures of a “global” South reflected in their travels abroad.
The seminar will concentrate on four particular areas:
- the period around the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth (Henry James, Edith Wharton). This component on the seminar will examine the place of France and Italy in aesthetic rites of passage. It will also examine Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw for its phantasmal representation of Britain at the centre of a debilitating Empire.
- the influence of European modernism on interwar writings (Lost Generation writers: Fitzgerald, Hemingway; Eliot and modernist poetry; Elizabeth Bishop and Gertrude Stein in Paris, Djuna Barnes).
- representatives of the literature of the American South who had significant interactions with interwar France, Germany and Poland (William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, William Styron).
- postmodern and existential writers, mainly in post-World War II Paris or literary London (Richard Wright, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag).
Requirements
Regular attendance is essential. Participants should also read and study the set texts due to be discussed in the seminar meeting. Participants will be asked to make one scholarly presentation per semester. There will be a schedule for the submitting of the proposed title, a thesis outline, and the various chapter drafts. It will be expected that participants will follow this schedule closely.
Selected bibliography
Henry James, The American; Daisy Miller; The Turn of the Screw
Edith Wharton, “Roman Fever”; The Age of Innocence
Randolph Bourne, “Trans-national America”.
T.S. Eliot, “Burbank with a Baedeker, Bleistein with a Cigar”; The Waste Land; Four Quartets
Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night; “Babylon Revisited”
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Elizabeth Bishop, North and South
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
William Faulkner, Sanctuary; A Fable; “Ad Astra”
Katherine Anne Porter, “The Leaning Tower”
William Styron, Sophie’s Choice
Richard Wright, The Outsider
Sylvia Plath, Ariel
Critical Works
Brinkmeyer Jr, Robert H. The Fourth Ghost: White Southern Writers and European Fascism, 1930-1950 (2009).
Burden, Robert. Travel, Modernism and Modernity (2012).
Cowley, Malcolm. Exile’s Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s (1951).
Dimock, Wai Chee and Lawrence Buell eds. Shades of the Planet: American Literature as World Literature (2007).
Giles, Paul. The Global Remapping of American Literature (2011).
Virtual Americas: Transnational Fictions and the Transatlantic Imaginary (2002).
Kennedy, J. Gerald. Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing and American Identity (1993).
McMaster, Graham. “Henry James and India: A Historical Reading of The Turn of the Screw” (1988).
Theoretical aspects of translation
dr Iwona Mazur
The seminar will focus on a range of theoretical aspects of translation. The instruction will begin with an overview of the discipline's history, and will proceed with discussions of equivalence, functional theories of translation, discourse and register analysis approaches, system theories, as well as translation studies as an interdiscipline. Special attention will be devoted to issues related to audiovisual translation in general and audio description (making audiovisual media accessible to the blind and the visually impaired) in particular. During the course numerous empirical studies and theoretical models will be discussed and the students will be strongly encouraged to conduct their own small-scale research projects.
To successfully complete the course the students will be required to attend the classes, complete reading assignments, actively participate in discussions, be prepared to deliver an oral presentation and make systematic progress on their M.A. theses. They will be expected to provide topics and outlines of their M.A. theses by the end of the second semester.
Prospective candidates are expected to have an excellent command of English, be well-familiar with the principles of academic writing, have an inquisitive mind, be well-motivated and capable of independent study.
Selected bibliography
Munday, Jeremy. 2008. Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications. London: Routledge.
Venuti, Lawrence (ed.). 2001. Translation Studies Reader. London: Routledge.
Gender shapes our lives and influences our behavior, including the way we use language and conduct our conversations, but few of us are aware of it.
The aim of the MA seminar is to examine the relevance of the category of gender as a social construct in language use across various social contexts. Gender will be approached from the sociolinguistic and (widely defined) discourse analytic perspectives. In the first semester, students will be introduced to the fields of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and conversation analysis and learn how to collect, transcribe and ultimately analyze data in view of the research aims and questions. Gender will be first discussed as an important social variable ‒ as featured in variationist sociolinguistics ‒ followed by the language in use approaches. We will analyze how gender intersects in interaction with other social categories including sexuality, social class and ethnicity. The focus will fall on social constructionism in which gender is construed as performance and accomplishment in an interaction, as well as the concepts of agency and the queering of language.
In this seminar we will look at how dominant assumptions of gender and sexuality can be drawn on to (implicitly) discriminate against others and how that gets manifested in language and interaction. Other focuses include: gender ideologies, gender in professional workplace including health communication and military, gender and leadership, language and desire, language of gender and sexual violence.
The material covered in class will guide and orient students to develop their own MA topics of interest in the area of language, gender, and sexuality.
Credit requirements involve: active course participation based on assigned readings, completion of a reflection paper in the second semester, MA thesis proposal (topic) in the second semester, adequate progress in preparation of MA thesis.
Selected bibliography
Ehrlich, Susan, Miriam Meyerhoff and Janet Holmes (eds.). 2014. The handbook of language, gender, and sexuality (2nd edition). Wiley Blackwell.
Litosseliti, Lia and Jane Sunderland (eds.). 2002. Gender identity and discourse analysis. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Meyerhoff Miriam and Susan Ehrlich. 2019. Language, gender, and sexuality. Annual Review of Linguistics 5: 455-475.
Mills, Sara, and Louise Mullany. 2011. Language, gender, and feminism: Theory, methodology and practice. New York: Routledge.
Sue, Derald Wing. 2010. Microaggressions in everyday life. Race, gender, and sexual orientation. Hoboken, NJ.: Wiley.
Although it may not be evident at first sight, natural languages change constantly. Moreover, since language is a social phenomenon, the changes which it undergoes are, to a large extent, motivated by social, cultural, political and technological circumstances. Such events as the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, the Second World War as well as much more recent developments in digital technology (such as the Internet and social media), to name just a few, had their linguistic consequences in the history of English. In this seminar we will take a closer look at different aspects of extra-linguistic conditioning in language change at its different levels, including changes in the lexicon and semantics (including the appearance of new words as well as new meanings), morphology, syntax, phonology and orthography. Apart from considering the linguistic effects of important socio-historical and cultural events and phenomena, we will also discuss the importance of text corpora for linguistic investigations. The participants of this seminar will have an opportunity to choose the topics for their MA theses within the area of historical sociolinguistics (and sociopragmatics), and investigate language change with regard to either distant or quite recent times in the history of the English language, depending on individual interests.
Selected bibliography
Chambers, J. K., P. Trudgill, and N. Schilling-Este. 2002. The handbook of language variation and change. Malden (MA): Blackwell.
Crystal, D. 2006. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University press. 2nd edition.
Hernández-Campoy, J. M. & J. C. Conde-Silvestre (eds.) 2012. The handbook of historical sociolinguistics. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
McColl Millar, R. 2012. English historical sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Miller, G. 2012. External influences on English: From its beginnings to the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mugglestone, L. (ed.) 2012. The Oxford history of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2nd edition.
Russi, C. 2016. Current trends in historical sociolinguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter Open.
The seminar will familiarize students with Canadian literary tradition and major trajectories of change in Canadian literature from the second half of the 19th to the beginning of 21st century. Special focus will fall on multicultural post-WWII prose in its varied themes, forms and genres, including emphasis on the different ways in which Canadian writers have been using autobiography, biography and other life-writing genres in their fiction writing, and the ways in which they have fictionalised auto/biographical texts. The seminar will also allow students to examine changes in the critical discourse on Canadian literature. Texts selected for discussion vary in style, subject-matter and focus, allowing students to appreciate the diversity of contemporary Canadian prose and literary criticism and theory. The course is reading-intensive.
Each student will be required to prepare an oral presentation on a selected topic, act as a discussion-leader, and write a research paper. Active participation in in-class discussions, as well as regular attendance, will also contribute to the final grade. Towards the end of the academic year the students will be asked to submit a tentative M.A. thesis project. All theses have to focus on problems related to Canadian literature, although topics based on comparative North American approaches will also be considered.
Successful candidates wishing to participate in the seminar should have thorough knowledge of the US literature at the undergraduate (B.A.) level, and an avid interest in literature that goes beyond basic undergraduate requirements. At the selection stage, familiarity with Canadian literature is desirable, but not required.
Homo viator, man as a “travelling animal,” was an early medieval religious concept describing the human sojourn on Earth. In more modern literature it refers to various types of journeys undertaken by real and imagined literary characters. This seminar will be devoted to the analysis of various types of journeys in space and time. From the medieval hero Guy of Warwick, who traveled to the “heathen country” (the Middle East), to Glenn Patterson’s nightmarish wandering through Hiroshima, we will analyze themes and genres which reflect manifold representations of the cultures and regions of the world in literature in English. Beginning with the discussion on England’s ambivalent relationship with France and other European countries, we will then look into the Arab Middle East and the Far East (China and Japan) to account for the on-going oriental obsession, continuing our “Passage to India” to see the colonial “Jewel in the Crown,” and finally ending our journey on a transatlantic voyage between Africa, the West Indies and John Coetzee’s South America. The selection of suggested reading will include mainly shorter texts augmented by film adaptations and films related to the selected topics.
For those who join me on this trip, fasten your seatbelts, take a good book and enjoy the ride!
Selected bibliography
Boehmer, Elleke. 2009 [2005]. Stories of Women. Gender and Narrative in the postcolonial nation. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. (Ed.) 2000. The Postcolonial Middle Ages. London: Palgrave.
Walder, Dennis. 1998. Post-Colonial Literatures in English. London: Blackwell.
The study of translation has increasingly become a vibrant area for empirical and experimental research. Using modern technology such as key-logging and eye-tracking, it is possible to describe how translators process information and produce translated texts for readers from a different cultural background. Translation Process Research (TPR) as a part of cognitive translation studies explores the complexity of translation. In this seminar we will focus on translation as a process in which translators make decisions and on the development of expertise needed for high quality translation. The questions which we will ask include the following: How language is processed in the translator’s mind? Do different kinds of translation (oral vs written, interlingual vs intralingual, dubbing vs subtitling) impose different demands and require different competences? How can understanding the process of translation contribute to what we know about language and communication?
The students who choose this MA seminar will be able to select a topic of their own interest, explore it and design a research project for their MA theses. Alternatively they can use data which have been collected in two large-scale research projects conducted at the Faculty of English (the ParaTrans project and the EDiT project financed by grants from the National Science Centre) and analyse the data with their own research purpose in mind.
Credit requirements, apart from good attendance, a keen interest and open-mindedness include: ability to read and report on academic research, participation in in-class discussions and presentations, steady progress on their MA projects.
Selected bibliography
Hurtado Albir, Amparo, Fabio Alves, and Isabel Lacruz. 2015. “A Retrospective and Prospective View of Translation Research from an Empirical, Experimental, and Cognitive Perspective: the TREC Network.” Translation & Interpreting 7 (1): 5–25.
O'Brien, Sharon. 2013. The Borrowers: Researching the Cognitive Aspects of Translation. Target - International Journal of Translation Studies, 25 (1). pp. 5-17.
Schwieter, John and Aline Ferreira (eds.). 2017. The Handbook of Translation and Cognition. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Whyatt, Bogusława (guest editor). 2016. Language Processing in Translation. Special Issue of Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 52(2).
Whyatt, Bogusława et al. 2016. Tłumacz – praktyczne aspekty zawodu. Poznań: Wydawnictwo naukowe UAM. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10593/24583
English is Polish, ain’t it? Similarities and differences in structure and function.
prof. zw. dr hab. Jacek Witkoś
The aim of this four-term course is to assist participants in writing an M.A. thesis dealing with topics in English and comparative Polish-English syntax. A wide range of topics will be provided and the participants will have the opportunity to select the topic they feel most comfortable with. In the focal point of our interest lies a set of comparative studies on similarities and differences between English and Polish phrase and sentence composition. Special attention will be devoted to topics in such widely discussed areas of comparative studies as: anaphoric relations and reconstruction, interrogative constructions, infinitive constructions, nominal phrases of different types, including Numeral Noun Constructions (NNCs), and word order permutations (‘free’ word order phenomena). Seminar participants will be given patient and careful instruction, as well as concise reading assignments. The participants are encouraged, though not obliged, to work within the framework of generative grammar and its recent stage: the Minimalist Program. Empirical studies (corpus-based as well as grammaticality judgment tasks) of narrowly defined topics are welcome.
The course is divided into two equal parts: the formative one and the productive one. The first two terms constitute the formative stage; the participants undergo a thorough education in the field of comparative syntactic studies and methods through a series of mini-lectures presented by the Instructor and seminar discussions of reading assignments. The last two terms are devoted to the preparation of the M.A. thesis itself. Class instruction will be centered both round the issues pertinent to individual topics and general areas of interest including latest developments in the field.
Pre-requisites for the course: the successful candidate will be a B.A.
diploma holder in English and will show keen interest in linguistics.
Previous expertise in the field of theoretical syntax is welcome, though not necessarily required, as explicit teaching of English syntax and syntactic theory will start at a most accessible level.
Selected bibliography
Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Greenbaum, G, and R. Quirk. 1970. A Student Grammar of English. Cambridge: CUP.
Ouhalla, J. 1995. Principles and Parameters. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wardhaugh, R. 1996. Understanding English Grammar. Oxford: Blackewll.
2. MA Seminars for the Dutch philology programme :: Seminaria dla kierunku Filologia, specjalność Filologia niderlandzka
Polsko-niderlandzka mobilność kulturowa na przestrzeni dziejów
dr Michał Wenderski
W ramach seminarium proponuję przyjrzeć się różnym formom polsko-niderlandzkiej mobilności kulturowej na przestrzeni dziejów. Idąc za Stephenem Greenblattem (2010) zajmiemy się „skrupulatnym dokumentowaniem konkretnych przykładów mobilności kulturowej”, czyli wybranych pojedynczych przypadków kontaktów, wymiany, wpływów, współpracy, recepcji, inspiracji itp. pomiędzy polskim a niderlandzkim/holenderskim/flamandzkim polem kulturowym.
Przykładem mobilności kulturowej mogą flamandzkie wpływy w architekturze Gdańska, holenderski rodowód osadnictwa Olędrów w Polsce, międzywojenna sieć awangardy literacko-artystycznej, historia wystawiennictwa sztuki niderlandzkiej w Polsce i polskiej w Holandii/Belgii, przekłady i recepcja twórczości literackiej i wiele innych.
W oparciu o współczesne założenia teoretyczne i pojęciowe (m.in. mobilność kulturowa, transfer kulturowy, histoire croisée, métissage itd.) zajmiemy się zbadaniem i opisem przeróżnych przypadków i przykładów relacji łączących Polskę i Niderlandy.
Celem seminarium jest refleksja nad różnymi kontekstami użycia języka. Choć ojciec współczesnego językoznawstwa, Ferdynand de Saussure, w swoim Kursie językoznawstwa ogólnego twierdził, że "jedynym przedmiotem językoznawstwa jest język rozpatrywany sam w sobie i ze względu na siebie samego", to jednak nie da się zaprzeczyć, że pełne zrozumienie komunikatu możliwe jest dopiero wtedy, kiedy pod uwagę weźmiemy jego kontekst. A jest to pojęcie bardzo szerokie – mówimy m.in. o sytuacji komunikacyjnej, tle aktu mowy, warunkach towarzyszących komunikacji czy o relacji między komunikatem i jego interpretatorem. Albo jeszcze szerzej – o czynnikach pozajęzykowych albo tle kulturowym. To właśnie ta wielopłaszczyznowość stwarza wiele możliwości, żeby w pracy magisterskiej przeprowadzić ciekawe badanie.
Wymagania: Pierwszy semestr poświęcimy zagadnieniom teoretycznym (w tym możliwym metodom badawczym). Skupimy się też na ustaleniu tematów prac magisterskich. W kolejnych semestrach ocenie będą podlegać postępy w pisaniu pracy.
